Expository content area texts, cognitive style and gender: Their effects on reading comprehension

Abstract The purpose of this investigation was to determine if cognitive style (field dependence/independence [FD/I]) and gender interact with passage content to affect reading comprehension. Research on FD/I and its relationship to reading‐related and other academic tasks served as the theoretical and empirical basis for the study. While most of the research has centered on the holistic versus analytic processing differences, this study investigates a less‐frequently examined aspect of FD/I: interest in and preferences for social stimuli. The causal‐comparative study involved two levels of two independent variables: gender and FD/I (field dependent [FD] and field independent [FI]) as determined by the Group Embedded Figures Test (GEFT). Comprehension scores on social content and non‐social content expository passages served as dependent measures. Participants were juniors and seniors (n=90) from a large metropolitan university. Using analysis of variance, no significant differences by gender or FD/I were found when the content of the passages was of a social nature. However, when the content focused on non‐social topics, male and field independent participants performed significantly better than female or field dependent participants. Discussion focuses on the possible roles of schema, schema utilization, and reading interests in these findings. Recommendations include extending this study to a wider FD/T range of participants and examining various reading comprehension measures for passage content. Further, field dependent readers may benefit from instruction in recognizing and adjusting for influences of their interests or preferences on reading comprehension and from strategies to increase and maintain comprehension control.